Karnataka Drugs and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (KDPMA) has suggested to the department of industries and commerce that the pending Pharmaceutical Policy should be on similar lines with the state’s IT and BT (Information Technology –Biotechnology strategy document.

“The key focus should be to ensure that the industry is assisted with the right funding and infrastructure assistance. Pharmaceutical sector in the state needs handholding to garner its next phase of growth,” said KDPMA at an interactive meet on IT-BT with regard to invest in Karnataka.

The Association deliberated with industries & commerce minister RV Deshpande along with other officials to highlight their most important recommendation of implementation of Karnataka Pharmaceutical Policy. And it should come under the ambit of the department of industries and commerce in order to realize its full potential. Currently, this is under department of health and family welfare.

The state is making an aggressive bid to make every effort to ensure a comeback of the KPP to entice foreign direct investments and offer incentives to local companies to expand operations with both greenfield and brownfield projects, besides scout for collaborations in research and production technology.

With Karnataka government making a fervent bid to woo global companies to ‘Invest in Karnataka’, the state department of industry and commerce has now given a commitment that sincere efforts would be made to improve the ease of doing business to facilitate investment.

The Association is also expecting the clearance for the formation of the Karnataka Pharmaceutical Development Council (KPDC) with a budgetary provision of Rs.1 crore and the Vision Group on Pharmaceuticals with Rs.25 lakh allocation which are two monitoring agencies of the development of the sector envisaged when KPP was unveiled.

Representing the KDPMA was Harish K Jain, treasurer, KDPMA and director, Embiotic Laboratories (P) Ltd and Sunil Attavar, secretary KDPMA and MD, Group Pharmaceuticals Ltd who maintained that pharmaceuticals in the state like the IT and BT sector was also a knowledge sector going by the trained manpower, research and development and intellectual property.

The Association is also insisting for a pharma park. This is because Karnataka is home to 264 manufacturing units that include small-medium, large, public sector and multinational companies providing 25,000 direct employment and generating Rs.12,000 crore worth revenues of which Rs.5,000 crore is from the export. The core competency of the Karnataka pharma industry’s role is in contract research and manufacturing services (CRAMS).